


Questions of the Heart

by chase_acow



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Canon-Typical Violence, Hearts, M/M, Mutual Pining, avengers as a big weird family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-23 09:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20006203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chase_acow/pseuds/chase_acow
Summary: He showed up on perfectly sunny Tuesday, his black and gray shadows smudging the natural light in the big kitchen while he sat waiting for their verdict. Steve of course was all in, though he'd lost his heart to a woman before he'd crashed his plane into the arctic. Clint wasn't even pretending not to avoid looking anywhere in Bucky's general direction, his heart safely locked in his chest. And nearly everyone else was more excited for lunch. Tony, his heart using Thor's hair as a swing, shrugged and set Bucky up with a room.Square A2 = Pining





	Questions of the Heart

**Author's Note:**

> So one: I just wanted to be real . . . loosey goosey with pov as a writing challenge and it was fun, and I hope it didn't make things too confusing.
> 
> Two: I still love this video [In a Heartbeat](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2REkk9SCRn0)
> 
> And Three: uninspired title from Survivor's [The Search is Over](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UokrWsUtxhw) which I have loved since road trips when I was tiny.

Nobody thought much about it before Bucky moved into the tower. They were all friends to some degree or another, and it wasn't unusual to see hearts getting passed around during their day to day activities. Tony had always worn his heart on his sleeve, the medium sized ball of red muscle bouncing this way and that as Tony's attention drifted. It never stayed with one person too long, not even Pepper during their latest 'on again' phase before the switch moved permanently to off. 

At least until Bucky came in from the cold.

He showed up on perfectly sunny Tuesday, his black and gray shadows smudging the natural light in the big kitchen while he sat waiting for their verdict. Steve of course was all in, though he'd lost his heart to a woman before he'd crashed his plane into the arctic. Clint wasn't even pretending not to avoid looking anywhere in Bucky's general direction, his heart safely locked in his chest. And nearly everyone else was more excited for lunch. Tony, his heart using Thor's hair as a swing, shrugged and set Bucky up with a room.

Tony didn't give the tower's new inhabitant much thought afterwards since he'd finally made the breakthrough needed for the nanite replication deployment and spent the next twelve days exclusively working, passing out, and chugging nutrient shakes in his lab. On day ten, he started rubbing his chest. On day eleven he blinked hard and asked Friday to turn the lights up. On day twelve, he realized the lights were on full blast, and the shadows covering his work area were because he couldn't remember the last time he saw his heart.

For his part, Bucky spent most of the time in his room until he crept out to one of the lesser used library lounges to sit in the sun trying to catch up on sci fi books for the last several decades. He took a blanket though he couldn't feel the warmth, and he finished the books though he wouldn't think about them again. Nobody bothered him; he couldn't blame them not when even the brightest beam of light couldn't cast away the gray he lived in. He was halfway through _The Left Hand of Darkness_ when something bounced into his leg where he'd curled up in on one side of a giant couch. 

He blinked up, pulling himself from another world of perpetual winter to see a heart balanced on his knee. It was slightly smaller than Bucky's fist, the arms it could produce when necessary worked to smooth down the blanket from where it had ridden up over his bare feet. He hadn't had a heart near him in decades. He froze, wondering if it would move on now that it had helped him. It hoped over his lap, finding a fold in the blanket and burrowing in to stay while he read. The pages of the book looked a little more yellow with age, softer from more hands than his thumbing through, and the character Estraven felt more heroic. 

That's where Tony found his heart when he went looking, nestled into the blanket in the hollow of Bucky's knee. "Hey, there you are," Tony said, plopping down on the other side of the couch with his hand out. He waited until his heart climbed up his fingers before he pulled it up to his chest.

"I wasn't keepin' it here. It just kept showing up," Bucky said, curling slightly tighter into his arm of the couch. He should have realized it was Tony's heart, he'd seen it earlier with the other Avengers, and none of them had roaming hearts.

"I know, it never was very obedient," Tony said, using his fingers to play with the heart as it used them like monkey bars, climbing across. "You look a little more colorful."

Bucky glanced down at the hand still holding his book. The skin did look less deathly, and instead just the pallor of someone who'd lived inside their whole life. It was nothing at all like the rich tone of Tony's skin. Sighing, Bucky didn't say anything and went back to his book; it had been nice to lounge with the heart, but he supposed Tony would be more careful to keep track of it now.

"All right then, chatterbox, don't mind me," Tony said, pulling his legs up on the couch behind Bucky's so he could tuck his feet under Bucky's thigh. "I'm just going to sleep for a day or so. Don't rat me out to Peter, he'll make me review his already perfect science project, and there's only so much teenage angst I can take."

"I-okay," Bucky promised, though since it looked as if Tony had already passed out, it probably didn't matter much. He pulled the blanket up to cover Tony to the waist and then turned the page to continue reading.

Later in Tony's workshop, Steve gave up his search and asked JARVIS, "Do you know where Tony is? Nobody's seen him in days and I'm worried."

He took the same comfort in Tony's heart the others did; none of them had made it this far with hale and whole hearts. No one said anything, but Steve tried to make up for his missing heart by taking care of the others as much as possible. Peggy might always have his heart, but she'd never been the type to keep it all for herself. 

"Sir is up in the library lounge sleeping," JARVIS answered.

"Ah, I'll go pick him up off the floor," Steve said with a smile. It wouldn't be the first time he rescued a sleeping Tony from a sore neck. "I wonder how he even got there, I thought he was allergic to books."

"Actually, Sir appears to be quite comfortable," JARVIS said, interrupted Steve march up the stairs. "He is sharing a couch and blanket with Sergeant Barnes. I would say that is one of the better places he has ended a inventing spree."

"Bucky, huh?" Steve asked stopping with a foot still raised for the next step. He took the next exit intending to head for the gym instead of bothering the sleeping beauty. Anything that gave Bucky extra reasons to stay was good in his book. "That's interesting."

Bucky didn't really know what interested him anymore, but when Tony woke up with a rumbling stomach and pulled Bucky behind him to the kitchen, he went. He ignored the scattering of the Avengers who couldn't stand to be in the same room as a heartless and didn't particularly feel anything about that either. Sitting at the counter, he watched as Tony put together a massive sandwich and cut it diagonally.

"I know what happened to you," Tony said around a mouthful of food, chewing quickly to swallow before taking another too big bite. 

What happened to Bucky wasn't anything anyone should have know, let alone have to live through. His heart had stayed with him longer than any of the scientists expected. In the end they delayed the conditioning and mind wipes on him to apply further stimulus on the heart to find its breaking point. It didn't break, but Bucky never completely forgot the nightmare feeling of watching his misshapen blackened heart melt and wisp away. He never forgot that even when he forgot why it mattered.

Tony wiped some mayo from his chin. "I know what science has done, what people have done to hearts," he said, forcing himself to make contact with Bucky's vacant gray eyes. It wasn't comfortable, but it wasn't Bucky's fault. "But my mother told me a heart is never really destroyed. I like to believe my mom never lied to me."

Rapping his knuckles on the counter between them, Tony pushed the plate with the other triangle sandwich toward Bucky, scooped up his heart, and out into the hallway he went.

The sandwich still didn't taste like much, but no one had made him one in so long, Bucky couldn't help but try to enjoy it.

Tony's heart began to find him more often. It found him when he was in Steve's room trying to piece together the missing parts of his memory. It showed up with he was hiding in the laundry room, overwhelmed with all the choices he had to make every day. The heart spent time hopping between him and Tony during movie night. Once it even jumped down from the top of the shower door to play in the puddles while Bucky tried to quickly finish cleaning and wrap a towel around his waist.

It wasn't just Bucky of course, sometimes the heart joined Clint for breakfast, flicking milk into his sleepy eyes. It settled on Natasha's knee while she skimmed over the day's intelligence briefings. Bruce found the heart among his meditation supplies, and always chose the incense it held up for him. But there was little doubt the heart began spending more time with Bucky, he even began to feel.

He felt guilty.

He could see the blue of Steve's eyes, music made Bucky's hips swing and his head bob, and he wanted fresh strawberries cut up over his morning oatmeal. He wanted to enjoy it, the small respite, but not at Tony's expense. Tony was slowly losing his color, nothing as serious as a true heartless, but enough to be noticeable in the dark smudges under his eyes or his disinterest when the robots in his lab handed him the wrong tool.

Bucky slouched into Tony's workshop, heart safely riding in the pocket of his hoodie and found Tony tinkering with a new arc reactor. The slope of Tony's shoulders and the strength in his hands made Bucky want things he shouldn't have. Even if it was hard, he was going to do the right thing. He took the heart out, cradling it briefly in the palms of his hands, and then eased it off on the table at Tony's elbow.

"You need to make it stop," Bucky said, the push-me-pull-you feeling in his empty chest throbbing a vicious beat. He should never have come back to find Steve, it hadn't mattered much to him at the time, but now he knew he was only causing more problems. "It isn't fair that it hurts you."

"It isn't fair that it just gives you a taste of something you don't know you desperately want, either," Tony said, before he tucked his tongue between his teeth to finish a delicate connection. "Besides, it never has listened to me. You're funny, good looking, and have a tragic backstory. Really, this is your fault."

"I don't want it," Bucky snarled, though the bite was taken from his words when he reacted on instinct to catch the heart when it slipped trying to climb up to Tony's head.

Tony turned around, his goggles magnified his eyes huge, and took his heart back. "Try harder next time, maybe it'll believe you," he said, gently brushing his thumb over one of the heart's ridges. "Hey, save me a seat for the movie tonight. I think Natasha picked that newish Guy Ritchie movie and I want to watch it."

So things continued, Tony getting slightly worse and Bucky getting slightly better until the combination of Bucky's decent health and a mission only he could finish came along. There was a rogue agent in Siberia, someone who wanted to clear their conscience, save the world, make a deal for a kush retirement. He'd only speak with the Winter Soldier, someone who'd understand, who'd been where the agent was.

Someone who'd trek across miles of tundra to get to a decommissioned base and the bunker system underneath. Risk and reward. They had to take the risk, and now he reaped his reward, buried under the rubble and playing cat and mouse games with Hydra's latest death squad. His indifference had made him slower, and without a handler, his focus was nonexistent. He never should have taken the mission, or thought he was something he wasn't, or believed enough to override Steve's first inclination to say it was too soon.

However, regret wasn't anything he felt either.

Cradling his rifle across his elbows, Bucky belly crawled down a tunnel, pausing to hold his breath and listen anytime the debris shifted. His teeth ached around the flashlight clenched in his mouth, but the light cut through both the darkness and the free floating dust. Only a little farther, and this maintenance shaft would let out into a storage room and he'd be able to rest for a moment. He had to drop down head first, tucking his head at the last second and rolling to a seat with his legs outspread.

Tony's heart jumped up down between Bucky's knees, flailing its arms until he set his rifle aside and scooped it up in his gloved hands. Some of the fear eating at his control eased away, he could almost smell Tony's cologne, feel the warmth of an arm over his shoulders, have the safety of the workshop. It didn't belong to him, he shouldn't be so relieved.

"You shouldn't be here," Bucky said softly, chewing the end of one finger to take the glove off so he could pet the heart with his bare hand. "I don't deserve you, Tony can do better, I don't have anything to give him in return. I'm empty. This is what I'm good for. Suicide missions." 

The heart didn't listen, it cuddled into his neck and tangled his hair. Tony was right, this was his fault. At first it was enough that a heart, any heart, wanted to spend time with him, but now it Tony's heart he wanted. Tony was everything anyone could want, smart, funny, kind when he wasn't poking people to see how far he could go, and generous. It wasn't fair for Bucky to be so selfish.

"I don't want you," Bucky tried again, pulling the heart from his hair and staring at it. He focused on how much he didn't want to hurt anyone, the anger that even after everything, he still didn't have any real choice. "You need to go away and don't ever come back. I don't want to have to bother with you, you just make everything more difficult."

It hurt, more than he thought it would, but he couldn't take it back. The heart had to go, Tony needed it and Bucky didn't deserve it. The heart stilled, and when he put it down on the concrete it couldn't hold its own weight up, falling over. The flashlight wasn't much but with it he could see the heart, the dark spot developing as it struggled up, reaching for him even after he'd hurt it.

On a different continent Tony stumbled, the plate he was carrying to the dishwasher shattered against the kitchen floor. Natasha and Sam rushed to his side, both their hearts jumping down to move away the ceramic shards before he cut himself.

"What happened?" Nat asked, helping Tony to the same counter stool he'd pushed Bucky into weeks ago. Her heart disappeared as quickly as it'd come, but Tony still felt honored that she'd shown it to him.

"Bucky," Tony gasped, clutching again at his chest and rubbing over his heart chamber. "Bucky, there's something wrong. He's in trouble."

In trouble and making stupid decisions, most likely, Tony thought. He'd felt that kind of pain before, the ache of disappointment of letting someone down, of not being good enough. Wherever his heart was, Bucky was there needing him, and Tony was busy having brunch. He hadn't been thrilled about the solo mission, but who was he to tell Bucky what to do?

Nat checked something on her phone and glanced back to him. "He is late for his check-in," she said, typing something else into the small screen, "but it's only been a few hours."

"I don't care," Tony said, forcing his hands back on the counter and relaxing his fingers. They were friends now, him and Bucky, the least they were was friends now even if he had the feeling time would make them more. "Pull him out. Now. Get him home." 

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Bucky said, twisting so he could lie down next to it on the rough floor. He curled his good arm around the heart letting it nuzzle against his cheek. "I didn't mean, I didn't mean any of that. I'm sorry."

The heart cuddled into his neck again then burrowed down underneath him, disappearing the way hearts did when they belonged. The warmth he'd felt before was nothing next to the heat of a heart in his chest again. He could feel the small aches and pains now, the exhaustion, and the fear that Hydra's force was too big to escape from. Maybe he'd never be free.

He had a reason to fight. If the heart wouldn't go back to Tony on its own, then he'd have to take it. Picking up his gun, he checked the loaded ammo, patted himself to make sure the resupply was still attached, and clicked the flashlight off. He went hunting.

"-m trying,Tony. Blizzard condition --- -ard," Steve voice broke up through the connection to the Tower.

"He's alive, Steve!" Tony yelled, pacing the same thirteen feet in his workshop he'd been pacing for the last week. "I know he is. My heart hasn't come back, and it wouldn't have any other reason to stay away."

"I be---- but the pl---- ry again --orrow."

Tony slammed his hands down on the table as the connection broke. The week since SHEILD had registered the seismic activity at Bucky's last location had started shitty and had somehow only gotten worse. The world was a smear of monochrome, a color or two flashing briefly depending on what he was looking at. After, hijacking several meetings to discuss the issue of heart reincorporation, Pepper had locked him out of the working levels of the tower. Worst of all, he'd been grounded from the rescue mission. 

Some fucking rescue mission if it couldn't even fly through a little snow, wind, ice, and hail. He couldn't concentrate, didn't want to work on any of his projects, he couldn't even catch up on his sleep because as soon as he tried, restlessness had him up and roaming again.

He wanted Bucky back.

"Sir? Miss Romanoff would like to speak to you," JARVIS said, interrupting Tony from scratching harder at his chest.

"Put her through," he sighed.

"Sam's coming down to get you, Clint made an ice cream bar," Nat said, her voice low and clear over the speakers.

"No thanks, I'm not," Tony rubbed his eyes, digging in hard enough itch at the bone, "I'm not good company right now."

"That doesn't really matter to us though, does it?" Sam asked, strolling into the workshop. Sam had been a surprise when he'd joined the Avengers, his heart was strong and willing, but also broken, a deep gouge between healthy muscle and dead stone. When Riley had fallen, part of Sam had never gotten back up.

"No it doesn't," Nat agreed, her smile evident even if only through the audio. "Now grab him and get up here."

Sam rounded the table. "You heard the lady," he said, wrapping an arm around Tony's shoulder. He was warm, his soft shirt devine against Tony's cold skin and grimey tank. "We miss you man, and there's nothing we can do for Steve or Bucky right now, but we can take your mind off it for a while."

Waking up several hours later, Tony found himself covered in a blanket and drooling peacefully into a couch cushion. His chest was warm again, but Rhodey sleeping sideways in a nearby recliner solved that mystery. He must have flown in after Tony had moved from chocolate ice cream to mango-raspberry to amaretto with added whiskey. He curled his hand over Rhodey's heart and fell back asleep.

Although his record was seventeen days, Bucky started to feel the grind of his sleeplessness after four. The heavy weight of Tony's heart in his chest was as much a boon as it was a burden. Hydra was dead, the last one barely older than Bucky had been when he was drafted, and clearly just as in over his head. His neck had snapped just as easily as any other.

His frozen hair slapped against his cheeks as the wind shifted, it would have hurt if he could still feel his face. The strip of cloth covering his eyes barely managed to keep his eyelids from freezing together, but did manage to block out just about everything except for dark and light. It was the sound then that clued him in that rescue or death hovered over him with the beats of a helicopter's rotor blades.

Rhodey's soft voice woke him again, and Tony stretched, his back popping from sleeping on the too soft cushions. He kept his eyes closed, enjoying the floating feeling that came before full consciousness. 

"That's good, and your eta?" Rhodey asked, causing Tony to blink his eyes open enough to see his friend on the phone. "Yeah, I'll tell him."

"Tell me what?" Tony immediately asked, rolling off the couch onto his knees as he blinked at the late afternoon sun slanting through the windows.

"Cap and Bucky are on their way back, they'll land tonight around twenty-one hundred," Rhodey said, grinning as he tossed his phone on the table and dropped to the floor to grab Tony in a bone crushing hug.

Tears welled up, relief more than anything else because the waiting was over. "And he's okay?" he asked, pushing Rhodey away so he could reach for the last swallow of whiskey in his glass.

"Dealing with a little frostbite, but otherwise fine," Rhodey frowned, taking the tumbler from Tony's loose fingers. "C'mon, let's get you cleaned up."

The reunion was anticlimactic in that it went exactly the way everyone expected it to. Tony's heart leaped first, bouncing from Tony's shoulders to the top of Bucky's head, and when they kissed, it squeezed between them, healthy red and growing.

Later, days but not weeks, Bucky woke up in Tony's bed, the earliest morning light barely breaking the window. Tony breathed near him, lying on his stomach and curled around a pillow and peaceful for once. The heart wasn't in bed with them, but Tony had been worried about Vison yesterday, and Bucky would bet the heart was there. He turned on his side, keeping his hands to himself, knowing better than to bother Tony so early.

Something was different. Not the softness of the blankets, the low draft of the air flow system, or unseen but felt eye of JARVIS. He glanced at Tony's tousled hair, the warm tan of his skin taunt over muscle until it disappeared under the royal blue top sheet. Warmth flooded his chest as he thought about how he'd get to wake up here every morning for as long as Tony would let him.

His chest.

Bucky glanced down at his bare chest, cupping his palm over the place his heart would be. There was something there, a spark. Maybe Tony's mother was right.

Maybe a heart never was really gone forever.


End file.
